Not near as exciting as Dan's surgery photos but what the heck. We put a wooden bench in front of the sink so he could sit to brush his teeth. Of course I forgot and ran my shin into it in the dark. I cried and jumped around and poor Dan couldn't get up to hug me. Of course with this bad cold I couldn't let him anyway. It hurt worse than it looks but soon I'll have a nice bruise. Wendy

Nice goose egg there Wendy. I saw you posted in the middle of the night, I hope you or Dan weren't having a bad night
_________________When you hurry through life, you just get to the end faster.
Pirate Ship Tree House

Hi MadDogMike, Dan's sleeping really well. I made us chocolate chip cookies too close to bedtime so the sugar and caffeine kept me awake the entire night. No naps today just working on glazing so I'll sleep really well tonight. Thanks for asking, Wendy
_________________

Quite edifying to see Dan and Wendy donating blood.
I do that too, have for a long time. (I've forgotten when
the blood bank gave me my first one-gallon-donated
award.) My misadventures were a bit more exciting
than Wendy's feet-up-for-an-hour.

I first donated knowing that my blood type (O-neg) was
much in need just then. (I knew my type because a
friend studying to be a high school science teacher had
helped me type it myself in his lab.)

When I arrived to donate the desk was staffed by the
nicest old lady you could imagine. She was plump with
a very wrinkly face and all-white hair, and the charmingest
granny smile. All went well until this dialogue ensued:
"And do you know your blood type?"
"Yes, I'm O-negative."
"That's very good! And where was it typed?"
"I typed it myself."
For about three seconds her charming smile was replaced
by an expression I wouldn't want to see on someone
coming toward me in a dark alley. Then she clamped the
smile back on, with difficulty, and said:
"Well, we'll just type it again to be sure."

This must have disturbed what some people would call my
karma or my entry in the cosmic database, because a near
catastrophe struck as I was walking out the door after
donating. First I had to cross a very wide street, five lanes
just to the center island. I was feeling fine as I started
across on green, but almost immediately the light turned
yellow. I began running toward the center island, but
within ten strides I could barely stand up. Somehow I
made it there and hugged a light pole to keep from
collapsing into the street, but it was almost ten minutes
before I could finish crossing. Since then I don't shortcut
the recovery minutes after donating, and I park in a place
that will not require a strenuous return trip.

Then came many uneventful donations followed by a
messy one. As the technician stuck the needle into my
elbow, out spurted a brief stream of blood that flew about
18 inches--most of it onto the sleeve of my shirt. I was
not watching the needle stick so I have no idea how it
happened, and it never happened again, but for at least
two years I always held my other hand up during the
needle insertion to deflect any further spurts onto the
floor. Yes, the blood did stain my shirt sleeve perm-
anently, but fortunately it was an orange shirt.

Last month I donated blood again, for the first time in
over eight years. The reason for this hiatus is another
story and a gorier one, so I'll save it for a future post.

i'll be watching for part two of your story. The reason your blood spurted was that the phlebotomist hit an artery. I was a Red Cross volunteer at an army base and they trained me to draw blood. The training consisted of watching for one hour and then being told to draw five tubes of blood each on 40 pregnant women lined up in the hallway after a Lamaze class. The one thing they didn't tell me was to check for a plus and to avoid drawing blood from any that did. So of course I found a site on one woman and when I stuck in the needle the blood actually hit the ceiling and then rained down on both of us. I was given a jug of peroxide to cleaned us up with after finding out from the captain what had happened. They must have drained out your blood really fast! Whenever I have blood drawn I always look up at the ceiling. Wendy

Thanks for Dan's pictures...I really kneeded those!!!! Hope things are going well for ya Dan. We miss you on the broom patrol.

Kraken...bring on part 2...we can hardly wait.

So far I am just diagnosed with a tweaked knee with inflammation of the bursa...supposedly 2-4 months should self-resolve. I know the roller derby will have to find some new jammers with all of us knee veterans on the mend.
_________________ "Oh waiter, another cocktail please!!!"

The problem started with lower intestinal disturbance: queasy,
soon gut churning, with ongoing diarrhea that my HMO just
couldn't diagnose; they dismissed it as "suspicious for ileitis".
Two of their gastroenterologists tried to give me colonoscopies
but neither could get the scope past my ileo-secal valve; they
both reported it too inflamed. Obviously this mystery ailment
disqualified me as a blood donor just then.

There followed over a year of treating me with any combination
of antibiotics that they or I could find that the scientific journals
reported as seemingly helpful for this class of mystery disease,
no matter how expensive. One antibiotic combination cost more
than $1500 a month and turned my urine red after exposure to
air, making me less than popular with friends when I spattered
a little on the rim of the toilet bowl. No treatment helped at all.

That's when I took my medical needs to another organization.
The first time I brought this problem up with them, they gave me
a CT scan and told me I seemed to have an ugly-looking growth
in my bowel which could easily be cancerous. By that time I was
desperate (unable to work much for well over a year) so when they
told me the most reliable way to confirm this was to cut me open
I told them to start cutting. The next morning they told me they'd
found a 3.5 centimeter carcinoid tumor on the flap of my ileo-
cecal valve, which they'd excised (along with some localized
metastasis) by removing a foot of my bowel.

Slow recovery from surgery, but problem solved! No recurrence
in more than 5 years! But blood donation rules around here, at
least back then, prohibit a cancer survivor donating blood until
5 years after his last treatment. That plus a few minor technical
obstacles, mostly to do with my hemoglobin level, brought me up
to November 2012.

PS--I wanted to save the foot of bowel, which even had my
appendix on it, to have it mounted by a taxidermist, but the
hospital staffers thought that was a really bad idea. I did acquire
a second navel out of this though. The way the incision was
stitched up gave one spot the appearance of being another navel,
about 4 inches from the original. This lasted for almost a year.

Wow Kracken that's a good example of never giving up. You saved your own life with a great attitude and by trusting your "gut". It's a story with a good ending. That's the best Christmas story so far this year. Best Wishes, Wendy

Many thanks, Wendy, for your encouraging reaction
to my cancer episode, and the enlightenment you
provided regarding my aerial blood spurt during the
ill-fated needle stick. Next, a couple of pre-kindergarten
fiascos that make it surprising that I'm alive these days
to write this stuff.

When I was born my family lived in a vintage house on
the edge of a little-used canal originally built for freight
boats in the colonial era. Early on my parents would take
me outside to play near the canal, and my favorite game
was to throw small branches into the water. But all too
frequently I would forget to let go of the branch as I
threw it, so of course I'd wind up in the canal along with
the branch. Fortunately my father watched me closely
and fished me out quite quickly.

Very shortly thereafter we moved to a two-story house
with a long inside staircase (luckily carpeted). From
time to time I would trip as I started down the stairs,
and invariably tumble all the way to the bottom. (My
father was certain that I merely forgot to step down at
the top step.) I clearly recall intense soreness lasting an
hour or more on each part of me that had bounced off
a stair on the way down, and I cannot explain why I
never broke a bone. Nor do I know why it took me such
a long while to form a reliable habit of making sure I
carefully stepped down off the top step.

Hi Kracken, I never fell in water once unintentionally as a kid but I started swimming lessons when I was 6. I loved them but the water was always so cold that my teeth chattered.

As for falls we moved to a 2 story home when I was 12 and falling down those stairs was a habit I've not yet broken...bones I've broken. I posted photos of my metal plate going in my wrist earlier on this thread. I really think about it now before the first step. Kids bones are more pliable and not so brittle as us old folk.

Wow! Only 105 miles from me--that's pretty close by
California standards. In which direction?

My apologies for having no broken bones in my history,
but I did get a concussion once: rear-ended on freeway.
It was a minor concussion; I drove the two miles directly
to my insurance agent's office and only at her insistence
trekked to the emergency room, where the doctor said
a concussion it probably was, but nothing much could
be done about it.

'Twas a week later that eye trouble cropped up. Things
began appearing in my vision like seaweed floating in a
tidepool, and turning my head suddenly produced multi-
colored sparks at the sides of my vision. Back to the ER,
where the physician on duty tested and questioned me
for about 40 minutes, finally saying he hadn't any idea
what was causing this so I should be consulting an
ophthalmologist.

This I promptly did, in fear and trembling. Before I had
finished listing all my symptoms, without any examination
at all, he stopped me and said "I see 3 or 4 cases of this
a day." He added that there was little that could be done
about it, but that it would probably go away in a number
of months. Turned out he was right.

The medical people on this thread probably recognize this
already as vitreous detachment: the transparent jelly inside
my eyeball had come loose from my retina. The gap
between them in places caused the black floating seaweed
effect; the loose jelly rubbing on the retina gave the
appearance of colored sparks.

My real regret was that something so common (another
ophthalmologist confirmed that it was about the most
common ailment he encountered) was unknown to the
ER physician.